Strong and Sweet
by ejectingthecore
Summary: A series of vignettes about Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. T for now; will go up to M later. I simply can't help it.
1. First

I own nothing Star Trek.

**Strong and Sweet** is a series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie.

**NOT **in the same world as _Schoolgirl_. This world is on its own.

*

1. First

*

Nyota Uhura liked her coffee very strong, very creamy, and very sweet.

Coffee was love at first taste. From the day of her virgin sip, she always brought it to school to drink during class, and it was a habit she wasn't about to break now that she was at the Academy. So on her very first day she sat in a cavernous, empty classroom, several rows from the front, taking a few hot, dreamy sips before the lecture would begin. It was more than a drink for her. It was a secret sensual pleasure. She relished the feel of it on her tongue, the warmth, the lushness, spilling down her throat. The scent of it intoxicated her, and she would breathe it in before taking some into her mouth. Sometimes she held a sip for a moment, reveling in it before swallowing.

That's what she was doing when her instructor himself got to class a bit early. Her first sight of him was accompanied by a strong, milky sweetness in her mouth. She gulped.

She knew who he would be. He was known throughout Starfleet not only as the first Vulcan and Human child, son of legendary parents, but also as brilliant, a lauded graduate and now the 'fleet's most promising teacher. She knew who he would be, yes, but she wasn't prepared for him as a person.

Uhura was good with words, but really body language was her forte, and she expected that reading a Vulcan would be an excellent advanced level test. In that regard, she was sorely disappointed, because this man could be read like a backlit padd. He didn't look neutral and controlled. He looked repressed and hesitant. He was more rigid than really necessary, and he seemed about to splinter when he entered the room and saw her there. She was stunned by how young he was, not only physically but in the way his eyes spoke of wonder and timidity.

He was a boy.

"Cadet."

His voice added a bit of intrigue to his otherwise open aspect. It was a voice she could drink. It would make the upcoming endless hours of listening to him rather delicious.

She stood to greet him officially and properly. "Uhura, Sir."

He stood even more stiffly upright and nodded to her, and then his next two words confirmed that no matter how severely and awkwardly he held his body, his voice was pure, fluid pleasure.

"At ease."

Right. She thought he ought to take some of his own advice.

*


	2. Fog

I own nothing Star Trek.

**Strong and Sweet** is a series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie.

**NOT **in the same world as _Schoolgirl_. This world is on its own.

*

I don't plan to do this every day! But I do happen to have another one this morning.

*

2. Fog

*

She had a theory that the air at dawn was the freshest, its cold tang lighting up her lungs and body. Far, far earlier than nearly every Cadet in the universe, Nyota Uhura got up to experience that air. It was sparked with moisture from the bay and cold despite the early fall brilliance that promised to bloom in the next few hours.

Fog was gathering at her feet, and she pulled them up onto the bench where she sat sipping her first morning coffee. Her mind was occupied with its hot, smooth contrast with the air, and with wandering thoughts about the academy grounds. They were stupidly idyllic. The grass was smooth like green ceramic, and manicured bushes sat like gumdrops on its surface. A flaw or two would greatly improve the landscape.

Or a Vulcan.

Why would she think such a thing? It was a peculiar reaction to her instructor, Commander Spock, walking far in the distance. He was so far away that it might have been hard to identify him if it weren't for his stance. He strode with his hands behind his back, in a manner that was surely meant to be serene and confident. To her self-trained eye there was something defensive about it. His shoulders were broad and he held them back in a strong, clear stance, but still...

She had it. It was the proud walk of a boy who was trying to prove that something--something embarrassing--didn't bother him.

She'd met him only days earlier, had had just two class sessions with him, and already she was fascinated with how he wore his intensity and raw honesty like negative armor. He was smart, accomplished, young, handsome, probably brave, yet something in him was uncomfortable. He had trouble relating in the most basic ways. He was by far the most deeply odd weirdo she'd ever met.

Even at a distance of what had to be 30 meters, he stopped abruptly when he saw her, as if they'd collided. He stood frozen for a moment that was a little uncomfortably drawn out. His tall body, dark hair, the pointed ears she could almost, barely make out in the blurry atmosphere, all were those of an apparition.

He nodded, obligatorily, turned and walked away.

It seemed they were the only two people awake in the world. It would have been nice to say good morning.

*


	3. Friday

A series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. **Not **in the same world as the Schoolgirl stories.

*

3. Friday

*

Spock entered the auditorium from the back, at the top of a cascade of hundreds of seats, which terminated at a low stage where he would teach. Teaching was, thus far, a tense and unsettling activity, and seeing the classroom from above made his distaste, tinged if he were to admit it with a small amount of fear, even worse. He imagined himself lecturing from the bottom of a pit, a pack of Vulcan elders peering in at him. From high in the back of the raked room, the seats looked like they poured inexorably into that pit like a tide.

He was being dramatic. He'd been teaching only four days, and there was a high probability the experience would improve.

As he made his way down an aisle, he came to realize Cadet Nyota Uhura was sitting in what he already regarded as _her_ seat. On his left, as seen from where he stood to lecture, five rows up, fourth seat in from the aisle. He noted appreciatively that her appearance was as acceptable as his own. It was a level of neatness and precision that few Humans could attain.

He descended the steps with his back straight as was his usual manner, perhaps more so, since her presence made him feel especially awkward. He was unsure why, but that had been the case since his first day of teaching, when he'd entered the classroom and looked up to find her abruptly _there_, as if fully formed from the emptiness of the lecture hall. Then again, he felt awkward around every other being he had met. She was not exceptional.

He descended to several rows behind her and wondered why she did not react, then noticed she was listening to something, language practice streams, or perhaps music. Her finger tapped on her mug. Likely music. The aroma of coffee came to him gently, like a song from an adjoining room.

He stood still.

He did not drink coffee. Had never tasted it, actually, but he knew the scent. Rich and dark. He catalogued it as a scent related to Cadet Uhura. Fascinated, he watched her lift her drink to her mouth and tip the cup. He kept silently watching her as she sipped.

She sighed, without knowing anyone could hear.

He did not move, until the sound of a door behind him made him snap to attention. The lecture was scheduled to begin in three minutes.

*


	4. Doppler Effect

A series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. **Not **in the same world as the Schoolgirl stories.

*

4. Doppler Effect

*

Spock walked in the cold morning air, and he felt it cleanse his nose, mouth, lungs. He strode with his head high, though truthfully the reason he came out to walk so early was to be unobserved. He was a unique being, not only on this campus but in all of space, and he was not eager to be stared at by volumes of students, and even other instructors, as he strolled. Being gawked at was a distasteful experience, and he appreciated a single time during the day when he did not have to endure it. So he walked before 0600.

There were a very small number of people outside at that hour. He had come to recognize one or two, an odd community of those who were carving out a time and space for themselves, yet running into one another. He was already learning their habits and routes so as to avoid them.

It was, for the most part, a safe time.

As he completed that thought, someone went rocketing past him so close that he felt the breeze and air pressure of her sudden arrival, and sudden departure. A woman running in the cold, music in her ears, her breath misting before her. She was fast, and he had only a second to notice it was Cadet Uhura.

She seemed to fly, and as she flew her hair swung.

Though she passed too quickly for him to observe her hair for more than a very brief moment, he called up images of it mentally. Her hair was very long and unlike many of the females in Starfleet, she wore it hanging low on her back. Spock was not conversant in the language of hairstyles, but he had noticed she pulled her hair up in front but let it hang down in back—a peculiar and perhaps logical solution to the problem of hair in one's eyes while working. That she--and not many other females--had decided on this form of hairstyle was what made him look a little longer at her than really necessary. Her hair was a curiosity that he studied, and that was why he had such a clear mental image of her. Of her hair, yes. It was the richest, darkest brown, a color Humans might compare to chocolate or, as she might prefer, to the strongest coffee.

He had a fleeting thought that it would be fascinating to touch, and the thought was troubling.

Soundwaves had changed as she passed, coming closer and moving away, louder, softer, fast, and he registered those changes subconsciously. His conscious thought was that perhaps he too should run in the morning. It was only logical that if he moved more quickly he would have fewer seconds of contact with anyone he might meet.

*


	5. Still Point and Stream

A series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. **Not **in the same world as the Schoolgirl stories.

*

5. Still Point and Stream

*

Nyota took her strong, sweet coffee and full-to-bursting padd and walked out into the brisk morning. Any Cadet would think she was nuts for getting up so early. But it was so serene, all hers mostly, but for the scant handful of early rising weirdos like her.

She made her way to what she already thought of as her bench, far enough off a feeder path, not the arterial path that led thousands of students back and forth to major places, primary engagements. Even later in the day it was a place of solitude in the midst of bustle, an anonymous, but not lonely space. She could see the world from her bench, but the world simply didn't see her.

Usually.

Early morning, in the cold and quiet, was the time she allowed herself to not be driven. To not chase, focused, after her dream. She took a break from reading and tipped her head back to watch the sky. Everything moved, slowly, and she felt herself turn with the Earth. Or really she imagined it turning around her. That she and her bench were an unmoving point within the churning of classes and people and planets. Her gaze was soft. That sky was where she'd always wanted to go. Would go.

She returned from staring at the sky, came to Earth, and saw Commander Spock. The weirdest of the weirdos.

He was closer, not as ghostly and incorporeal. He walked with his hands behind his back, his shoulders straight, his uniform so completely pressed it was stiff on his tall, slim frame. Yes, he was severe. But he was a contained contradiction. Something about him was really like water. While his center remained still, his movements were fluid, full of grace, not as a river would be, but a stream. She thought that besides his discomfort and awkwardness, there was something deep that appreciated and radiated beauty.

There was also something in his stance and his so-called non-expression that smirked at the universe. He could walk like a hurt boy. She had seen it. But today she knew he could just as easily walk another way, as if he knew something he wasn't telling.

He passed within 10 meters of her and looked right at her. He caught her eye, and it seemed as if literally she was caught and couldn't turn away. She thought a spike of something like recognition passed between them. She had to be crazy. She knew nothing about him, really, only what she imagined. In reality he was a complete, unapproachable blank. He nodded his head and moved on.

Perhaps he was beginning to admit they were both there.

*


	6. Unknown

A series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. Notin the same world as the Schoolgirl stories.

*

6. Unknown

*

Spock awoke at his preferred time, the earliest but in no way hesitant rays of sun just beginning to slant across the campus and into his windows. The sky was a deep azure, a fascinating color that was richer than day or night. The turning point between the two.

To his mind, it was the most pleasing color of sky.

He felt peaceful and soft, unfocused. He had dreamt, and he mentally reached for something that was gone. He briefly longed to know what the dream was about and his mind struggled to find it, but it was a simple whiff of narrative and images that had passed through his mind while asleep, and no more.

He considered his quarters. His thoughts were not maudlin or self-pitying. Objectively, the apartment was too large, primarily because there were two of everything. Lying on his side, his eyes roamed across the expanse of his double bed, the unused side as neatly composed as possible for having existed beside him through the night. A slight tug on the blankets, pulled toward his weight while he slept, was the only disturbance. He had two rooms, each with a smaller room contained in it: a bedroom with small bathroom, and a living room with small kitchen. Much of the time he did sit in that living room, at a desk, but he largely ignored an all-too plush couch, chairs, and an ornamental fireplace. He could easily have carried out all his functions in one efficient space. There was a bath and a shower, water and sonic respectively. Resources wasted on one man.

He rose and put on the clothing he wore in private, the black t-shirt and loose black pants that were Starfleet issue for martial arts training, his feet bare. He was comfortable, and feeling comfortable, recognizing the feeling and enjoying it, was an indulgence he allowed himself when home and alone.

His bare toes slightly gripped the carpet as he walked to his front door and some subconscious force pulled him into the hall. There were floor to ceiling windows in the hallway, a fact he had often wondered about, since one's state, or for some people company, on entering and exiting home was, to his mind, private. He assumed the design had something to do with afternoon light. Right now the details of the campus were just beginning to be visible. He leaned against a strut in the wall and crossed his arms on his chest. He never stood this way in public.

He was completely unknown. No wonder he was completely misunderstood.

He watched nothing happening, and though he wondered why he'd felt the urge to come look at nothing, he found it enjoyable. Someone was making coffee, and the scent of it wafted down the hall. His mind spasmed, grasping again for that dream.

*


	7. Scatter Plot

A series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. Notin the same world as the Schoolgirl stories.

*

7. Scatter Plot

*

It involved complex translations in several languages. She was in a vast room, an auditorium, far flung seats with no horizon. She was being quizzed and timed and the test switched from Andorian to Tutu to German to Romulan to Vulcan, then exploded into a rapid-fire burst of Vulcan terms. She could see dark, angular shapes and squiggles and lines, the words themselves, skittering on the floor and getting away from her.

She had never failed a test.

She woke abruptly but silently. 04:47. The sky outside was dark, and in the dim light of the chronometer she could barely make out her own blankets, creamy white peaks in a rich, dark night. She rose and went to the window, one of her places of prospect and refuge. She could see everything, and not one creature could see her. She watched nothing, while her heart rate decelerated. Nyota searched the campus for any movement, almost, illogically, expecting words to be crawling and ricocheting on the perfect lawn.

In a few hours the sky would be steel and weak sun, a thousand red uniforms scattered in its rays.

Sudden insight compelled her to jump onto her bed, rummaging in the covers for a padd and stylus. She could draw it. On an x-y axis, she could plot the words. Angular ones vs. straight, and perceived difficulty, from mildly unreadable to so utterly alien they were indiscernible from distant breathing. She fervently assigned a two-dimensional point to each word form she could remember, working anxiously to capture them before the dream began to fade. She was still somewhat, perhaps mostly, asleep, and she knew and did not know it was the weirdest thing she'd ever done.

Her thoughts and hands slowed as the escaping things she could gather ran out. When she stopped, and breathed, and looked at what she'd drawn, it was peculiar, pretty, completely nuts. She drew her eyes away from the plot on her small screen, and let her mind soften.

And in the softness, there was Commander Spock. Huh. It was the dream test. Perhaps he was the instructor who broke her. She dropped the stylus as she was drawn back to the window, thinking idly that he might be down there, eternally wading through the nights and dawns and evenings and nights, and that he was so stiff and perfect he wouldn't even trip on the words. She wanted to show him what she'd drawn. She imagined him reacting awkwardly, sorry for her or for himself.

Her roommate shifted in her bed and dragged a sleep mask down off her pretty eyes. "What the….?"

Nyota's voice was soft and her breath bloomed and disappeared on the window glass. "I had a bad dream."

"Hmmmmmm." Gaila turned to face the wall and pulled her blankets up like a shield against Nyota's voice.

"And I drew it in a two-dimensional matrix." She looked down at the padd in her hand and began to realize how really crazy it was.

Gaila pushed her blanket back down, and sat up on her elbows, sleepy, half asleep really. "Nyota, you are the biggest nerd in the universe."

"No, actually," Nyota exhaled. "I'm really not."

*


	8. Hello

A series of vignettes about Spock's & Uhura's mornings together at the academy.

*

8. Hello

*

It could be classified as a test, Spock thought. It would be an investigation into the state of his interpersonal skills. He did not know, upon retrospection, whether the idea of a test or the idea of _her_ as the subject of such a test had come first. It was puzzling.

It was highly likely it would be an ordeal.

He'd woken to his quarters in their usual state, and he wandered their confines in the growing light, quiet with a glass of hot tea in his hands. He thought about a lecture he had prepared, about the carpet under his toes, about the status of his stash of tea. He gazed out his window, meditating in a light and what should be easy manner, attempting to make his mind blank and open. He was not successful. He washed, shaved, dressed as usual, efficiently but with great care, his clothing and face appropriately smooth and his boots clean and polished. If he were not so painfully self-aware, he would have distracted himself by pretending it was a typical morning, by pretending he was not going to force himself to do something awkward, as if he needed to feel more awkward. It was by no means required in any way. Why he was making himself do this, he could not explain. Perhaps it was the frequency with which he ran into Cadet Uhura. The chances were not great, and yet he had, on numerous occasions during the first few weeks of class, seen her. She had seen him as well, and this gave him an opening to practice being normal and say hello.

Since he was an especially observant person, he could call to mind her gait, her dynamic way of approaching anything inanimate or living. Since they had crossed paths so frequently, and because her eyes were vital and bright with an aesthetically pleasing shape that inclined in parallel with her curving Human eyebrows, he could also recall those mentally. He seemed to recall long eyelashes brushing her rich skin, so different from his own. Upon thinking about her eyelashes and skin, he noted it seemed an excessively detailed recollection. He cleared his throat before entering the classroom.

He entered from the back, as he sometimes did. It was not his preferred way of accessing the auditorium, as the view it afforded intensified his discomfort at teaching. However, he did not want to approach Cadet Uhura from the front of the classroom. He was already, since he could not hide from himself and had to admit it, nervous. He wished to say hello, not approach her from below as a supplicant.

She was not there.

He froze, having not considered that a variable might be out of order. She was a highly independent individual, and it made sense that she might deviate from her routine to do something she simply felt like doing. He was sure she did not wake in the morning and work so deliberately and with such difficulty to prepare for her day. She was free to drink her coffee with friends, rather than consume it here, alone and early for class with only his dead silence for company.

He stood, rigid, unable to move past his surprise at her absence. It messed up everything. While he stood that way, the air pressure behind him changed, a door opened, a breeze moved past him. Cadet Uhura walked three steps beyond him before she turned gracefully on one heel and smiled. Her teeth were white and square and appropriately sized so that her smile had an overall warming effect. However, a second after she flashed him with it she retracted it, corrected herself and stood at attention.

"Good morning, Commander." Her eyelashes did what he remembered them doing. But her voice was not as he remembered. Up close it was smoother, and illogically both more nasal and fresher than he recalled. He would have to adjust his mental image of her.

He nodded. "Good morning, Cadet." His own voice seemed overly deep.

He was motionless, having accomplished some part of his goal, and then he realized she was motionless too, waiting for him to release her. He was her superior officer, technically in control of this situation. He gestured with his hand that they should both proceed into the classroom. She nodded and smiled again, smaller this time, before turning and descending the stairs. He descended behind her.

Her hair swung, without restraint.

*


	9. Not Looking

*

9. Not Looking

*

It was a good thing people communicated most fluently with their silence, because getting him to communicate verbally would be a graduate level undertaking.

Nyota had come to think of Commander Spock as her pet translation project. Only because of her interest in how people communicate, with their bodies and with their mouths. She had said good morning to him the previous Friday. He had said it to her. It was progress.

It was also really uncomfortable. She'd never seen anyone so wound up and unsure, and she felt like if she touched him he'd shatter. No matter, a ridiculous thought. What reason would a Cadet have to touch him? He distanced himself in every possible way, and between his anxiousness and the fact that he was a superior officer, she laughed at herself for thinking about touching even his sleeve. While he prepared for class to begin, she sipped her morning coffee and pretended to read a padd and her mind traveled in its usual lazy circles and wobbly lines. Would he shatter? Just from the sleeve?

He hadn't spoken to her again. While she thought about how words look on a padd, his arms, sleeves, coffee and cream, she also thought about days past, and how they were at six days and counting since they'd briefly spoken. Since then, it had been only nods.

She only watched him because his movements were so different from those of any being she'd known. He was odd, and not just a little, but literally and figuratively alien. When she studied how he moved, she tried not to anthropomorphize him. It was too hard. His Human side was too exposed. Though she knew, like everyone, that the notable Commander Spock was the only half Vulcan anywhere, and could see plainly that he identified himself as Vulcan, what she mainly saw when she really looked at him was a Human boy. Yet, not a boy, but a man who had been through things that were daunting and mind-blowing. She could only imagine how he had come through whatever experiences he'd come through, to be here, at the academy, in this room, right when and where she was. The thought made her feel as if she were tipping toward him, tumbling down the rows of seats to where he stood below, reading a padd and not noticing her.

His body language was conflicted, dual. Vulnerability was predominant, yes, but there was underlying strength and brilliance. There was weakness and also confidence bordering on defiance. He stooped his shoulders somewhat, but to such a small degree that rather than indicate a caving in, it instead, counter intuitively, spoke of dominance.

While she watched him read, understanding blossomed. It was because it played up his great height. She couldn't tell for sure, because they'd been on different levels of stairs in the auditorium, but when he stood close to her she had judged him to be at least 15 centimeters taller than her, and she was tall for a Human female. Folding his shoulders almost imperceptibly forward allowed him an air of humility while actually featuring his powerful stature.

He looked down on almost everyone.

After class, she walked by his office. She was passing, wouldn't have a reason or an inclination to knock and talk to him. But she saw him there. He'd left the door slightly open, and he stood, leaning a shoulder on the wall, looking out the window. He put his weight on the wall, and it was the first time she'd seen him not completely upright. And though he was facing away from her, she could tell, in part because of the way the black fabric stretched across his back, that he had his arms crossed over his chest. He was comfortable. She had never seen him comfortable before. It was a private, silent moment. She knew she should not look.

*


	10. Measure

*

10. Measure

*

It was vital for a student of languages to understand rhythm, and to not only appreciate it but recreate it in his or her own body, using vocal chords primarily but other body parts depending on the language in question. Cadence and flow could change the meaning of a given word or phrase, to deleterious effect fairly often.

It was also crucial for a student who wished to be truly accomplished to be able to extend that understanding of rise and fall and emphasis to the written word, and extend _that_ understanding further to the point where pattern and nuance met.

Spock considered these truths as he graded "papers," and also considered the irony that although he knew these things to be true, he himself was often unable to "loosen up" enough to capture a fluid language. He knew, though he could not deliberately fix the problem, that he was especially inept at nuance. Egregiously so, actually, for a language instructor. At least he was aware of the shortcoming, though at times he was so aware of any of his numerous shortcomings that it became nearly impossible to move his body, let alone communicate in Andorian or Denobulan.

He graded the papers, the outmoded term tumbling in his mind. He participated in the standard colloquialisms at the academy, and some had already become ingrained after a scant month of teaching. On the 26th day of his introductory language survey course, he had assigned the students a simple essay on any subject, in a language of their choice from the array they were studying. As he read the resulting essays, they seemed to decline in quality as if he had painstakingly ordered them so that he would experience a growing gloom in the night.

Or not really night anymore, he mused, as it was 02:47. In the deepness of morning, he was finding that a precious few students understood the importance of tempo and flow, and he was wondering what portion of this problem was due to his ineptness as an instructor. He immediately then thought that it was no fault of his own, that he was a more-than-adequate instructor, and that even had it been his fault, his portion of the blame would not be reliably measurable. Most students were simply not able, or not predisposed, to truly understand more than Standard, and in many cases not even their own first languages.

He stood to stretch and walked to his kitchen to make tea, absently carrying his padd with him. His eyes and mind had become attached to the small screen and even as he walked and put on water and took down a mug from the cabinet, he noticed single words. Then he noticed phrases. And patterns.

He stopped what he was doing to concentrate on the essay in his hands. It was intriguingly measured and graceful. In fact, although he literally never used extravagant words of praise, it was mellifluous.

He was not surprised to note that the name attached to this assignment was Nyota Uhura's. She had written her essay in Romulan, a language fascinating to him, in particular as a choice for a first year student who would likely have significant trouble distinguishing it from Vulcan. She did not. While her work was far from perfect, it was impressive for a beginning student. Her grasp of the loose and more sweeping cadence of Romulan as compared to Vulcan indicated a grasp of pattern and openness to subtlety that made his bleary eyes and mind wake up. He thought, unexpectedly and oddly, that she could be awake at that very moment but would be measuring out coffee and not tea.

He stared at the padd, first in surprise, but then with a sense of immersion. He felt as though he could not pull his eyes away from the square yet rounded figures. As his eyes relaxed and his mind became softly alert, the lines and curves drew him in. The electric kettle signaled that the water had reached boiling point, but he did not turn it off. He simply stood in his kitchen, suspended, inside the words.

*


	11. Frozen

*

11. Frozen

*

Her body glided much like the words had in her essay, without effort.

Spock stood in between buildings, on his way somewhere, though at the moment he could not recall his desired destination. He was struck by her stride as she walked across a pathway perpendicular to his own. Her gait was eloquent.

It had been quite early that morning, almost 03:00 when he'd read her assignment. He must have been exhausted and literally half sleeping, because he felt a closeness to her, an intimacy of the kind that came from seeing someone, speaking to them, in a dream.

Her walk was buoyant, open, both aggressive and welcoming. He wondered at her ability to contain such far-flung opposites in a single, compact, lithe form. It was important he study her gait, as it reflected the grasp of cadence and nuance he had so recently, in the darkest pre-dawn, learned she possessed. As instructor, he needed to understand her abilities and limitations.

If he let his gaze become soft, she seemed to skate. He had seen Humans ice skating in a historical film. It was a most fluid and emotional activity, as utterly un-Vulcan as an activity could be, especially if one considered the cold conditions necessary for the sport. The females moved like water, swooping and dipping, the males mostly gliding handily but not as gracefully, often holding their partners' hands. The steam of their individual breaths mingled when they laughed, and the skating became a kind of informal dance. She moved like that, seemingly without friction and accompanied by a hint of something ethereal.

He imagined sharp metal blades, and white faux-leather skates laced up over Cadet Uhura's ankles.

It occurred to him she might see him stare, that anyone might see him do so, and that anyone would have a right to wonder what he was doing, frozen on a path.

He ought to continue.

*


	12. Gray

*

12. Gray

*

Nyota was sitting in her habitual place in the classroom, listening to the sweep of Gorecki on her headphones, a somber music for a gray morning, but somehow the rising and building of the sounds comforted her. She was enveloped in something crystal cold but somehow like a dark orange fire. Her fingers moved over her padd, stopped moving, tapped absently while she read, then swooped again to replace the text. She sipped her coffee and reveled in its heat, which she had managed to preserve as she strode to class through the damp chill.

She let her eyes soften, allowed the words to smudge and disappear, and immersed herself in Symphony Number 3. She allowed her heart to feel a tenth of the depth of a mother's suffering, of a child and mother separated by war, and her chest hurt with the gravity. Things she could not understand, but the music gave them to her.

She felt a movement in the air, so gentle it was a caress, and she turned to find Commander Spock standing just centimeters from her. She yelped and jumped out of her seat.

She only jumped a little, really, but effected a minor explosion of coffee, padd, three styli, a half-eaten cookie, and an apple, which rolled with the sound of a bowling ball in a completely empty alley. For extra embarrassment, she thought. She reached to the floor to still the gurgling of her coffee and regarded his boots, polished and dark and in her face, regarded his gray pants, a gray so deep it seemed utterly black from a distance. He smelled of clean laundry.

She looked up at him from her totally awkward position.

He drew his shoulders up and backed away, but he was caught in the narrow row of seats he'd waded into to approach her, to say good morning. He looked terrified--a looming, frightened, totally freaked out statue. She wanted to wrap a blanket around him and give him something warm to drink, with little marshmallows on top.

She laughed at the thought, and the very motion of smiling made her relax. If he were anyone else, he'd have laughed too, and the ice would have shattered.

*


	13. Attune

*

13. Attune

*

Whenever he spoke a language other than Standard, he relaxed.

Commander Spock spoke Andorian, and that voice spilled out and overflowed the classroom. Nyota closed her eyes and took a sip of her hot, sweet coffee, and just listened. Not to the words, actually, and she would probably pay for that later. But she simply listened to the sound. And a picture came to her mind of his voice as liquid. Where he was often so closed, there was a flowing expanse of openness. Independent of pitch and volume, his voice had an indefinable depth, as though it were layered, limitless.

He could make the two dumbest words sing. At ease. Good morning.

Besides these short phrases, she only got to indulge in his voice during class, and with her eyes closed it belonged solely to her. She had to remind herself there were rows and columns of people around her, attuned to the weird, such as a girl keeping her eyes closed all the way through a lecture. She forced them open and a childhood memory rushed to mind. On a hot night, flowers, the smell of heat on stone just beginning to evaporate into the coolness. The stars were expansive and flirtatious all over the sky. Her father showed her the moon through binoculars, and it seemed to split in two before focusing.

It took a moment to reconcile the abrupt young man at the front of the classroom with the sounds he was making.

She lazily brushed her stylus over her padd, forming a column of words in Orion.

Ink

Honey

Velvet

Coffee

Dark

Rich

She practiced forming the alien symbols, hardly noticing the words themselves.

He switched languages, and she waited for it.

It was not discernible in his body, that thing that happened when he slipped into conversational Vulcan. She thought, and in fact was sure, she was the only person in the universe to notice it, but it was his voice that relaxed.

*


	14. Unaware

Thanks to TalesFromTheSpockSide for giving me an indescribable picture of Leonard Nimoy that inspired this little scene. I'm sure I'll use it again for inspiration many times.

http://tinyurl DOT com/yaglgzc

*

14. Unaware

*

He wakes at 03:04, not with a start, but gently, pulled from a dream. There is no reason to rise and so he lies in silence. Or to be more accurate, in what seems at first to be silence, but is the confluence of many small sounds, computers and fans in every appliance, the chirp of a stray part in the cooling mechanism of the refrigerator, water running in someone's quarters. He listens to the symphony of noises so small they fade into what passes for quiet.

In the dark, he considers his bed, the smell of sheets, irrelevant things. He places a hand on the flat surface of the blanket next to him and unknowingly forms an empty space where something could fit, rest against his chest. He considers his own hand. It is pale, and his fingers are familiar, of course, so he cannot know for certain, but it seems they are long compared to most Humans' fingers. His nails are trimmed and shine naturally, as though polished. He believes it makes him look fussy, though it is useless to think so.

He has awakened for no reason, but as happens infrequently, this sort of irregular, unplanned occurrence does not bother him.

The Standard word serene comes to mind.

Because he can feel it, spiky and mussed, he considers his hair. It sets him apart, makes him awkward among Humans, whose hair can flow, curl, angle, fall down dark and long to touch a smooth curve of lower back. He will allow his to do none of those things. He can actually feel its disarray, but inexplicably he is not compelled to fix it. There is something comfortable about the night, and instead of rising and composing himself, he closes his eyes and sinks into the pillow, his hand on the flat blanket beside him.


	15. Chalk and a Short Skirt

*

15. Chalk and a Short Skirt

*

What they have these men wear, Gaila had said, and she'd fanned herself, but Nyota didn't see it. She watched Commander Spock prepare for class and thought he was a case in point. His uniform was darkest gray, a neutral color, a whatever color. He wore a jacket and pants that were kind of a dusty, matte blankness.

Her mind went off to gray, dusty places, and settled on a strange thought. Lipstick on a chalkboard. The color of his uniform looked good next to red, the red Cadets wore, though she was sure this had no bearing on the decision, made by home higher-up long ago, about proper uniforms. Some officer, somewhere, had not been thinking about a sweet, red-lipped Cadet kissing one of the old-fashioned chalkboards in these auditoria, her red skirt brushing up against the dusty slate. She laughed inside at the image of herself pressed up against the wall, kissing it like she used to kiss her mirror as a girl, all hope and silliness, a puff of breath obscuring everything. Then she laughed even harder at the thought of a stuffy officer's concerned face.

The Commander looked up sharply from his preparations.

Crap, she'd laughed out loud.

He unfolded his tall body, and she thought about how someone, somewhere, had measured his inseams and found his legs to be impossible.

As he stood he nodded his head and she nodded back and noticed that against his pale skin and deep, black eyes, his uniform was, she had to admit, not neutral at all. It was secret, like dark matter. It was cut so well it almost, very nearly didn't fit and yet fit so perfectly it revealed everything about his body, every curve and angle and sweep, even highlighting the slope of his eyebrows and squareness of his bangs. Before that moment, she hadn't noticed his shoulders.

Interesting.

No doubt some girl on this campus would find him unbearably hot.

She wrapped her own demurely reddish lips around her coffee cup and drank deeply, leaving a blush of lipstick on the lid. She smeared it with her thumb and forgot she was watching him move.

*


	16. Split Infinitive

*

16. Split Infinitive

*

_To confidently go._ Spock considered the phrase as he walked, severely upright, occasionally slapping at his pants where they were clinging to his thigh in an atypical and annoying manner. He had perhaps never in his life felt so uncomfortable. _Hal-tor k'guhl'es_. Go with confidence.

It did not work the same way as the loosely related, not precisely equivalent, Vulcan.

He had begun teaching 47 days earlier. It was the 17th day of Earth calendar's October. He occupied himself with such dull mental exercises, while one shard of his consciousness struggled to suppress the flight response. Another shard devoted itself to playing out an unpleasant scenario in which two glass walls converged, pressing the breath from his lungs in a visible cloud. A swamp colored cloud. Another shard was consumed by moving along the path between the communications lab and the dining hall.

He was being dramatic. But it was a point of fact that he would be somewhere between these two buildings forever. And yet he would arrive at his destination too soon by far.

He tried to bring the shards together in a centered whole. Tried to forget the pressing walls and the grim cloud and the infinite path, calling to mind the solitude of his quarters, the hum of machinery and life that passed for silence, the ease in the earliest hours before dawn. It only made him wish for his bed. He allowed himself that soft hiding place in the night, his own balled up sphere, no one watching or interacting. Suddenly his bed seemed like heaven. He wanted nothing more than to throw himself into it face first. He would have laughed at himself, if he could. It would've been a relief. It was a shame he could not.

Ahead, too close, he saw two glinting doors. Cadets were flinging one or the other door open, sometimes passing two or three students at once, panes reflecting the limited sun as they swished past one another, glass blades chopping.

Interacting was not something he was skilled at, he thought, and then told himself understatement was a virtue.

Eventually, the doors would close on him and he'd be inside. In the stifling miasma of the dining hall, he would find Cadet Uhura and give her the coffee mug she'd left on her desk.

*


	17. Night Machines

*

17. Night Machines

*

_Depleted._ She had a depleted brain. 12:30, 13:30, 14:30, 15:30. Counting the hours until bedtime, Nyota found them to be way too many.

It would feel so delicious to close her eyes and sigh into sleep. She could picture herself lying her head, just for a minute, on her folded arms. Could picture herself waking up hours later, her head on a dining hall table, alone in the night, everyone else finished eating and gone to bed. Even the cleaning crew had come and gone and worked around her. She would feel the swirling of their cleaning machines around her ankles, but would still not awaken.

Then out of the darkness and the swirling efforts of the night machines walked Spock.

Right up to her table. In her half-dream state she smiled, amazed at how he had a way of moving that was so graceful, almost like gliding, when at the same time he was so rigid. She idly wondered what he wanted.

Suddenly Nyota snapped awake. The Commander was standing in front of her, right at her table, speaking to her. "Cadet Uhura."

"Commander." She sounded, obviously, stupid, as well as rudely incredulous. She was only glad she hadn't been face down on her hands drooling.

He smelled good, and there was something familiar and also thrilling about it. Only because he distanced himself so completely, and his scent was something very few people could know. It was visceral. She was so near a man who literally let no one get close. She recalled that same scent of soap and laundry and shoe polish that she'd noticed the one other time he'd stood beside her. His boots. She was thinking about them gliding on the newly polished night floor.

She noticed, dumbly, that he had her coffee mug in his hand.

"You left this in the auditorium."

He handed it to her and nodded in his silent, official, and yet she thought perhaps it was actually private, way. She stood to thank him, but he motioned sharply for her to stay seated, and she found herself awkwardly between the two. As he turned to leave, she finally got her body sorted out. If she could only do the same for her brain.

*


	18. Clearing

Dislcaimers in chapter 1.

* * *

**18. Clearing**

* * *

She was always a really good girl. Very eager to please. But Nyota sang while she showered, and though she knew it probably bothered someone, anyone, she didn't care. It was one of the very few times she allowed herself to rankle.

She liked the water hot.

There was so much steam this time. She was hidden, in a private clearing, as though a thick fog had risen around her in a sweet enchanted wood. She let notes flow from her body and melt and run and turn into steam. She was pierced with fine needles. Free from the mental bonds and rigor of every day. Free of her desire for achievement and her willingness to perform. Her voice spilled from her, and she didn't judge it.

The semester was more than two-thirds over. She was exhausted by the work. And that's why it happened.

The steam reminded her of fog. Of the just-become-light of the early mornings she'd walked the campus with the scent of coffee and the saturated, cloudy air swirling around her ankles and obscuring her view. And as she thought about the foggy mornings, she imagined Spock approaching her through the mist. In the way a princess in a fairy tale vid might see a deer come close and nose at her. She could see his boyish face, angled eyebrows and dark, deeply serious eyes. Her voice stumbled, a note falling away as she caught her breath and leaned against the hot wet tiles.

Commander Spock. As if her commanding officer had walked into her shower. Right.

She sang. She didn't even listen to herself.

*

* * *

*

* * *

*

_I have not AT ALL given up on this story, and I apologize for the long break. I have been swept up in writing a Sarek/Gaila pon farr story, which I hope you'll read._

_It's called Undo These Restraints. I wish I could link to it, but I don't know how to make FF do so. It's here: **http://tinyurl DOT com/ykbqyff**_


	19. Weak Verbs

*

**19. Weak Verbs**

*

Spock believes he hides. Throughout his life he has attempted to do so.

In his office, his door is almost closed. He leaves it open a vanishingly small amount, in deference to the requirement that he be available for five office hours each week. Fortunately, few students ever take advantage of his availability, which he reasons does count, as required, without truly existing at all. He considers the door, how it is virtually entirely closed. And yet he himself is even more so.

He hears voices in the hall and bends over a PADD to look even less inviting, lest a student actually push through the impossible slice of openness.

A picture springs to mind, a very early memory of an incandescent moment. His mother's light voice, her laughing face. She is backing away from him, pulling at his hands, wanting him to play. Then there's coffee. The aroma is dissonant. The memory snaps shut as he is startled by a particular voice in the corridor.

Cadet Uhura.

His thoughts scatter like crows. He controls his anxiety, thinking about weak verbs, the conversion between the Kirellian and Earth day, about pi. She is a most challenging and aggressive student. To be frank with himself, he notes again, for he has before, that she scares the shit out of him. She is not coming in, is simply standing outside his door, accidentally there, and his relief is embarrassingly palpable.

She talks with her peers. He sees a red skirt, dark boots, dark skin between the two, hears her animated, mellifluous, and yet nasal voice. Admires, again, the lilt of her Standard, imbuing the language with far more beauty and flight than it deserves. Her skirt moves, and he can easily envision the avian motions of her hands as they wing through the skies of her sentences.

His mouth is dry. He dare not move to get himself water.

*


	20. Swan Dive

Hi all, thanks for reading and commenting. I am so happy you're all here.

I've been working on an epic Mirror universe story--utterly different than this one, much darker, but if you are open to that sort of thing, it is all alone in the crossover section of this site. Please take a look. It's called _Devil Beside Me_. Fix up this little address and you'll be there. http://wwwDOTfanfictionDOTnet/s/5755810/1/Devil_Beside_Me

*

**20. Swan dive**

*

Nyota woke in confusion. She struggled up through a haze of physical unpleasantness, sick and tired. Drained. And yet something delicious was falling backward into her subconscious before she could catch it. There was a familiarity, a sense of something she hadn't felt in a while, but which she knew. It was warm and pleasing and lush, utterly at odds with the ugliness of a sick body. It came to her suddenly. Sex.

Huh.

It was a delicious feeling, a sense of arousal and flirtation and touch. And the feeling was diving backwards off a building in her mind, and all she could do was watch it go.

It was replaced by pain, and revelation as reality hit. She remembered her situation, the second day of a vaguely defined illness. Basically exhaustion. Her head ached, her joints felt sad and weak. She was so tired that she actually felt worse after a long sleep. There were birds singing. There was Gaila, puttering, smelling nice.

Then Gaila's soft scent was replaced by the aroma of coffee, and Nyota sat up, as though the smell itself made her rise to sit against her pillows. She couldn't speak yet, but Gaila made happy noises, spoke to her. "Hey there." Told her she'd brought coffee.

She felt the mattress sink as Gaila sat next to her, offered her a cup. Nyota took it greedily, like a baby grabbing for something sweet, and she sank into a smile that was one-quarter thanks for the coffee, but still three-quarters dream.

Gaila spoke softly. "That look on your face, Nyota…It is _not_ just for coffee."

Her voice was cracked from disuse. "A dream I think."

Gaila's eyebrows rose. Nyota felt the hot liquid enter her body, warm her, wake her, then she realized Gaila was watching her with a sly smile on her cute, green face.

"_What?_"

Gaila touched her finger to Nyota's nose. "Who's the lucky dream guy?"

Nyota could only shake Gaila's finger away and whisper.

"I wish I knew."

*


	21. Someone

*

**21. Someone**

*

It was the earliest moment that could be considered morning, and Spock was awake. He was not agitated, nor poorly organized. In fact, he had an atypically pleasant feeling, indefinable and without reason. He thought that, ironically, it must be the rain that was spattering against the windows. His strong dislike of rain was softening as he spent more time on Earth, but he was still surprised there was any aspect of the wetness and indignity that he actually enjoyed.

He had not counted on the sound.

The singular sound made by the solidity of the water, in units the perfect size as to effect a tapping, or if they coalesced and exceeded a size of 3 millimeters a deeper, wetter, slapping sound. Irregular, sometimes in gusts or tiny squalls, sometimes rhythmic. Hitting upon glass the droplets crashed and exploded. The secondary tones, coming from pudddles on the ground below, carried the resonance of agitated bubbles and tens of thousands of liquid collisions. He had not known the complex beauty of this range of sounds.

He listened at his window, where he stood on these nights when, frequently, he awoke in the dark and rose to simply be at home in his quarters. To feel at home in his body. That Human phrase, he had heard somewhere, was odd and yet apt. For nearly every hour of every day his body indeed felt like someone else's house. In the very early mornings, long before the day, when he was alone and quiet he could walk with less deliberation, allow his face to soften, let his hands be free.

He looked at one now. His hands always seemed very far from him, nearly luminescent in their paleness, their shapes oddly unfamiliar, fingers longer than seemed right. When he focused on them specifically, they almost seemed to be not his. They must belong to _someone_, he thought, and then laughed at himself in the half-light. Laughed at the many layers of humorous illogic and also at the freedom of thought.

He placed one palm against the window and watched the rain appear to fall on and over his fingers. It would be hours before light came.

*


	22. Standard Deviation

*

**22. Standard deviation**

***  
**

It was unsettling.

If Spock were to indulge in strong feelings, and further yield to labeling them, he would have "felt like crap." A vivid metaphor that seemed entirely overblown until one felt it personally. He reclined on his couch, leaning back into pillows propped at the end of it, holding a blanket around himself. It was a vague, unaccountable crappiness.

There was absence.

He considered the watery window this time in dull daylight. On Saturday mornings with nothing to attend to, he was often at a loss as to how to orient and occupy himself. So he sat, huddled in insufficient warmth. In a manner most unbecoming a Vulcan, had anyone the ability and inclination to look.

As drizzle entranced him, one thought swam through to the surface. Cadet Uhura had been missing from her seat during Friday's language survey course. On any given day, a predictable percentage of the class—3.65% give or take the square root of its variance, corrected for a finite population of which he could comprehend a much larger sample than was considered normal, and thus not an ability he wished to disclose to anyone—experienced minor injuries or illnesses, or overslept. One student's absence should not alert his attention at all, let alone have an impact on his thought processes.

Or on his body.

An odd thought, which he for some reason felt hesitant to prod. He discarded it fast. He had the sensation that the thought itself was moving toward him out of dense shadow, and it was prudent not to look.

*

*

*

_A bit of self-promotion, and fun, as I'm part of a collaboration called Calendar Boys--an ST man per month. Check it out. (fix the dots) http://www DOT fanfiction DOT net/s/5747401/1/_

_And a TOS Spock/Uhura fun, sexy one-shot called The Surface, which takes place on the fantasy shore leave planet, where Spock gains some intimate knowledge. TOS gets no traffic--come see us. :-)_

_http://www DOT fanfiction DOT net/s/5785920/1/The_Surface_


	23. Churning

*

**23. Churning**

*

Nyota Uhura felt distinctly inelegant.

She watched a crush of a hundred or more students making its way toward and away from the Commander's desk. It churned, students approaching the pack, reaching him and dropping off padds, then winding off and fighting their way to the outside. More filled the spaces.

Like penguins, she thought, and then wondered why. She delved deep for a memory.

She stood back, just far enough to be continuously whapped by students who were peeling off, and all she could recall was a female penguin, trekking 100 kilometers over windswept ice to reach her mate.

Nyota did not have the energy to join the press and get to Spock's desk. She'd be the last to turn in her essay, which was utterly fine. While she waited in the shuffle's return path, she adjusted and weighed and balanced her coffee, the padd, her big bag full of reading material and the detritus of days and weeks and months of hard study, hairbands, stylii, she had to admit the likelihood of old fruit.

It was almost her turn, and while she couldn't see the Commander's dark eyes, she could see his hands. His fingers were slender and pale and they moved so gracefully to take and give. She stopped to wait for a turn, and to look. She felt her own hands acutely, so full and clumsy. Sensed a piece of hair hanging, delicately plastered to her temple with a bit of perspiration, and she swiped at it with the back of her hand and couldn't push it away.

*


	24. Awake and Hiss

*

**24. Awake and Hiss  
**

*

Spock had lived 13.33-repeating per cent of the potential normal range of a Vulcan lifespan. Each student in front of him had lived somewhere between 17 to 19 per cent of the average Human lifespan of 104 years, give or take several tenths of a percentage point and excluding outliers. And yet he felt old.

At the moment, the students were writing on their padds for several minutes, while he prepared for the next part of his lecture. A great murmur came from them, a meadow of Dalvin hissing beetles waking with a thousand scrapes and stirs, coughs, dropped styli and padds, one or two sounds of laughter, several yawns, shoes on the somewhat dusty floor.

Only a few absolute Earth years divided him from these cadets. Not much, and yet it was a cometary divide, which Spock could traverse for a lifetime and never find his place on the other side.

His thoughts were overwrought, as happened here on Earth. A sub-layer of his mind often engaged in swooping generalizations when he was at a podium teaching, and he found the habit cumulative over the course of the semester, which was coming to an end in approximately four weeks. He admitted a sense of dread at standing, in just a few minutes, to address this group yet another time. He had addressed worse groups. And yet these cadets unsettled him.

As it was in my childhood, it is now, he thought. There were a hundred boys and girls before him, and he couldn't have them as his friends.

_Gyrinus substriatus_ carries a bubble of air with it when it dives.

He looked at his hands, while he internally recited information about various beetle species and cleared his mind. But thoughts kept coming. In the remaining seconds of their writing break, Spock considered parallels, and wondered for the first time whether things might not get better in adulthood. Without self pity, but with a genuine sense of curiosity, he tried to recall why he had always thought they would.

He looked up to shake these thoughts from his eyes, as they seemed to physically cloud his vision, and found a student staring at him. Against all logic and with sacrifice and pain he had come to this place of higher learning and openness and equality, and they stared at him here, too.

Even Cadet Uhura.

He caught her eyes and he could feel a stab of anger, and a slow hiss of disappointment, escape his mind. She could no doubt see it. She looked caught. They held still, a silent pair among the low hum of motion and meadow life around them.

_Cysteodemus armatus_ has convex, black wing covers.

Uhura lowered her long eyelashes and dropped her head to read. Probably something he had assigned.

*


	25. Space Bell

*

**24. Space Bell  
**

*

She didn't know what made her think of diving.

Nyota watched her instructor, who sat contemplating his own hands, and thought of immersion. The water she swam down into was dark but clear, and it seemed to arrive, fully formed and deep, from outside her own mind.

She, too, contemplated the Commander's hands. They were lit with an almost iridescent greenness, a color that, were he human, would suggest feebleness, sickness. But he was not Human. And his hands were strong. He could punch a hole in the desk without the slightest effort. He rested his palms on it, and the muscles in his hands worked softly as he pressed against the surface.

A memory came from deep down, sitting on her great grandfather's lap, hot dusty sun and his scratchy voice telling her about an ancient diving bell. Thousands of years ago. One of the first ways that Humans went beyond their life on the ground. The way he wove the story, it made her dream of a beautiful bell in the black sky, carrying her. A transparent shell. She curled up in it and rode the stars, dressed in the tall boots and shiny uniform of a space girl.

The Commander's nails were trimmed as carefully as academy grass, his fingers long and pale. She watched as he bent one and dragged it about two centimeters along the desk, an intimate impression on metal.

She realized she was not writing. One hand gripped her coffee and the other her own knee, and she stared, dumb and glazed. She wanted to impress him, and not in the same impersonal way that she wanted to impress everyone. She wanted him to really see her.

And he did lift his head to look.

*


	26. Weather

Orientation note:

It's day 69 of the semester/their acquaintance. So for two nervous nerds it hasn't been that long. :-) For ease of continuity, I had them meet on Day 1 of the semester, so it is now around early November. In the next week or two, final assignments due and school winding down.

The poem used in the next couple sections is called The Rain by Robert Creeley.

*

**26. Weather  
**

*

Nyota watched cream swirl into darkness, sugar spark the surface and submerge.

She sat in the mess hall, her head bent over the sweetness as it sank, and she knew there was no other answer. She knew in her gut that it had to be poetry.

_…never the ease, even the hardness, of rain falling…  
_  
It was overkill, probably, for the final translation project in such a broad survey course. And it was risky. So easy to lose the subtlety and strangeness, the presence of not only words but nuance, real meaning, mood, context, structure. The more she thought about the risks, the more she fueled a secret fear that she would reveal something awful, that she would no longer be excellent. Finally she convinced herself she should not do it. She should translate a simple essay, a classic piece that all first year students tackled. She should be like the other kids, not always sticking herself out in front.

She observed her coffee, and circled from utter confidence to absolute despair, and all gradations and permutations of both, until bravery and fear intermixed and combined and became something acidic in her throat. She began and ended and restarted the thought process more times than she thought possible in a minute. Or perhaps she had been lost for far more than a minute. She idly noticed the mug was no longer hot.

Nyota wasn't averse to taking risks. But language was so important to her. Her career, the academy were so important to her. Her teacher so important to her.

The thought made her falter again and again. Why was he especially important to her?

Her mind drifted to a hot day more than a decade past. Solar noon, the sun burning hard into her flesh. She was standing on a tiny ledge, wanting desperately to dive into the pretty, glinting water 10 meters below. Despite the heat, her little girl arms and skinny legs shivered. She would get close, so close that her toes knocked dust off the edge and she heard it sift down and away. Then she'd back up, then get close again. When she looked down it was as if from space, peering into a weather system, a swirl of clouds over the surface of a verdant planet. When she finally leapt and hit the water hard, she had forgotten something. That she would have to swim. So focused on jumping, she was not prepared for the depth and pressure and tangled dark greenness.

He was so odd, the Commander, so quiet, almost brooding. Surely he would understand her choice to do poetry.

_…Be wet with a decent happiness…_

She'd thought it would be like falling, but it wasn't. It was like soaring. She held her nose and flew.

*


	27. Willing

*

**27. Willing  
**

*

Spock woke early, in the darkness of what was essentially still night. He felt a special longing to get out and away, to walk, farther and more purposefully than was typical.

Were he to admit the whole truth, he illogically thought of the hours before light crept into the sky as "his." On those mornings when no rain fell, the paths became like the surface of a placid body of water. Wading into soft curls of moisture around his ankles, he could breathe fully, correctly. Without struggle, he could glide along walkways lit by a series of bowls of warm light fuzzing against the darkness, and be nearly free. It centered him, and perhaps, he hoped, it steeled him for the hundreds of invasive moments ahead, the hundreds of voices and eyes and hands that made up the day.

It appeared to be that sort of morning outside, and Spock dressed not urgently, but with purpose. When he was nearly ready, he took a pair of socks from his drawer and carried them to the main room where his boots sat, allowing his toes to indulge in digging into the carpet. He sat, then, and put his socks on, placed his boots firmly on his feet. The zipping sound was rich and loud in his profoundly quiet space.

He paused, leaning over one leg, as a memory came rushing to the front of his mind. His father pulling on massive boots. It was a childhood recollection from a time when he was so small men's footwear seemed exotic and frightening. The boots loomed so large. He considered his own now, how they shone adequately, then changed his mind and brushed at a small spot on one toe.

His father's boots were not so black. The dust of Vulcan was impossible to keep completely away.

In the corridor there drifted the sweet and smoky scent of coffee, and despite his desire to get out onto the manicured and tranquil grounds, he felt apprehension. There was suddenly a flaw in the smooth surface of the morning. Or more accurately, a wave, willing him to come.

It was a feeling, and as such he tried to give it little credit. But it was there.

He rode the lift.

*


	28. Animal Hands

*

**28. Animal Hands  
**

*

So it was poetry.

Nyota stood behind two other students, waiting her turn to hand the Commander a brief summary of her topic. And she told herself, probably for the twentieth time, that it was normal to notice her language instructor's hands. Hands were central to communication, and she studied his. Sometimes as he swiped a screen with his commands, or at other times when he handed a padd so carefully to a student, gracefully avoiding touch. His fingers were slender and glowing nearly white, and they moved sensually and fluidly, even while he stood rigid and scared. As if they were, at times, alive and on their own. Shy animals, not birds exactly. No, not at all birdlike when he placed one palm quietly but solidly on a desk, and every once in a while dragged a finger along the metal surface. She studied, and it was as if she knew something about him that even he did not know.

She'd been over and over it, and it was no longer indecision that worried her. So why? Why did her breath become shallow when it was time for her to approach him with her plan for her final? It was impossible, but when she did step up to his desk she couldn't speak, only looked at him, and she felt herself blank as a backlit padd, cursor flashing. Blink.

She heard her mama's kind, weary laughter. _My Nyota, you may talk all you like, but sometimes I will not be able to listen_.

And there she stood, dumb in a dozen languages.

He was silent, too, and simply reached for her notes, and she noticed, as if for the first time, the real color of his skin. She'd thought of him as unnervingly pale. But he was not. Up close, he wasn't pallid or eerie, but green, a green that was alive and pulsing and alien. Her fingers skipped around the edges of the padd to keep from connecting with him, and for a brief second they both held the device.

Against her own skin, his would shine, light and depth. If she were to lay a hand on his, they would look striking together.

Huh?

A slow tendril uncurled inside her gut and she thought about his skin against her skin. She thought about placing her hand on top of his hand. About the way his finger did, just then, slide down the edge of the padd, closer to hers, and then she thought, also, oh shit.

*


	29. Diorama

*

**29. Diorama  
**

*

She was astounded.

In the space of one breath, a thousand moments crashed and collided in Nyota's mind, then broke in a crystalline burst. Tiny glints shone everywhere like suspended glass. Moments of noticing. The image of his legs came to her from a hundred angles, one each for the many times she had watched him walk. She saw his hips in her mind, and they were suddenly deliciously different.

She hadn't seen it coming.

And then the moments began to swirl around her, a galaxy of glimpses and notions and strange thoughts. They seemed to swoop past her, taunting her from outside herself. An image of him approaching her as a shy animal. Times when thoughts of him came to her in her shower, in bed, in private places and dark hours where his presence should not have been. A thousand moments of justification suddenly seemed so dumb.

A cold, fog-choked morning, watching him walk. She recalled seeing him expose his sweetness and boyishness through his gait, his stance. She had seen from a distance, which now seemed insufficiently detached, how his legs were almost inhumanly long, how his deviously fitted uniform traveled down those legs and ended where a pair of perfectly shiny black boots began. She suddenly saw those boots right in her face, as she bent to pick up a dozen dropped things. The smell of soap, leather, man.

The churning of noticings made her dizzy and she gripped his desk. Then blushed all over thinking about how his thighs were right then, at that very moment, pressed together under that desk. She was paralyzed, bent so slightly over the metal surface, so he could take her outline for her final project.

She dropped her hand from the padd and wondered how she might survive and move past the moment. She was cold with shock and lightheaded with sudden recognition, and she almost, really couldn't stand. And then it all slowed down and stopped.

Her teacher lifted his eyes to hers.

She was the shiny space girl, floating in the vacuum, and every moment she had known him hung like a star.

*


	30. Turn

*

**30. Turn  
**

*

Spock did not want to ascribe a positive or negative feeling to his solitude. But he found himself alone with his thoughts more often than seemed ideal. For example in the cold dark of early morning, walking to the mess hall. No matter, as he could not imagine comfortably sharing thoughts with anyone else. It was a logic puzzle that frustrated him, and that in itself formed a circular argument against his ability to approach the matter as a proper Vulcan .

He sighed into the quiet depth of the campus. Vegetation looked black and murky in the half light. He resigned himself to the stirrings of long chains and meshed gears of cogitation. It made him tired to even begin rehashing.

At his most generous, he envisioned his thoughts as the workings of a prototypical computer, moving deliberately on many levels. He imagined, in his isolation, that no one else's mind worked this strangely. Always calculating something, in some small corner, observing in the forefront, wishing in the depths. Often there were thoughts or memories which logically belonged in the farthest corners, but which made their way, greasy, through the gears to claim his attention. And the impulsive thoughts were always there, immediately under the surface. They stabbed at him, sticks in the machinery.

He continued in the dark.

A memory swam to the surface, with the motion of a faint star stared at too long. A realization. He had not been so alone in his mind since the Forge. It was his first dusk alone, when Vulcan's sultry heat turned to icy chill. He felt the scratch of a boulder's surface against his back, his body stretched out, eyes on the sky. He felt, acutely, the turning of his planet and, for perhaps the first time, truly knew it was spherical. He suddenly felt himself hanging in space. Then the cold tang of metal as his fingers reached impulsively to touch the blade at his side.

Along a campus path, walking toward tea and artificial light, he acknowledged his smaller self. A boy in the wilderness, touching his only safety.

There were bound to be a few people in the mess hall, even at this hour. Professors, students. Perhaps Cadet Uhura.

There, for example. A stray jab of thought.

The door opened, and he walked into the smell of cinnamon and cream and coffee.

*

*

*

Author's Note: Thank you so much for the flood of kind words when I post these chapters. The pace should pick up again now that I've taken care of a few real life delays. I have also continued writing rated M material and have decided some of it is really NC-17 and thus not allowed here on . So I now have a place for NC-17 material at ejectingthecore DOT livejournal DOT com. There is some smutty mirror bondage there right now, in case you are so inclined. Cheers! And thank you again.


	31. In her palm

*

**31. In Her Palm  
**

*

She was not looking forward to the door opening.

Nyota stood just outside the upper level of the auditorium, a hot cup of coffee in her hand and her bag hanging heavy by her hip, full of padds and one real book. Poetry. So many dizzying and exhausting rounds of thinking and thinking about choosing poetry, so much endless chasing of pros and cons, the patter of rain, the doubts in the night, and now she wanted her teacher. She wanted him. A sensual, hard wanting, so much, yes.

He was inside the door.

In her immobility her mind swam and swayed and came up with a summer day, making cake. She was so tiny, the memory was only an impression of kitchen, of yellow sugar smell and blank heat. She was mesmerized by waves and ripples in the air and heard her mama's voice calling her _stubborn_.

Her coffee began to burn in her palm as she stood, longing. She leaned forward the slightest amount, drawn to the man she knew was inside. And got too close before she was quite ready, and the door to the classroom swished. The effect, the sound, was like air escaping a hull breach. She was broken of her reverie. She had to step in.

Her eyes ran down the center aisle, devouring rows and rows, and where all the seats and angles and curves of the room came together in one perfect point, there he was. Leaning far over to pick something off the floor. He had one hand on the desk to steady himself, and his back leg was planted for balance, dark boot grinding into the floor, his leg long and lean in dark charcoal fabric. He gracefully swept himself up and placed a padd on the desk. She watched his shining hands straighten his dark clothing, pull on his jacket, and he turned.

His eyes were full of the dread she felt, and his body stiffened into his typical, uncomfortable posture. As she moved toward him, he was the one immobile, and in his discomfort, he was gorgeous. She closed her eyes for just a second, just a breath, a pause, to compose herself. And in the dark behind her eyelids came his voice.

"Good morning, Cadet."

And she was chocolate on the summer windowsill.

*


	32. Sugar Sludge

_A/N: If after the sweetness you are in the mood for NC17 material, there is a new piece at ejectingthecore DOT livejournal DOT com._

*

**32. Sugar Sludge  
**

*

Spock considered oversimplification. It seemed illogical, and yet, there were blanket statements that the Vulcan species had long encouraged. _That they were smarter than everyone else_, Spock's mind threw up as an example, and he smirked inwardly, recalling his mother's soft face surrounded by the light from tall windows, her eyes and cheeks flushed with confusion at his announcement that he would join Starfleet.

_Vulcans get inebriated from ingesting chocolate. Vulcans have no emotions. They cannot lie. _

His decision had led him here, to this classroom, this seemingly depthless pit at the center of rows and and aisles of seats where students' faces would soon stare, blank and pitiless. He was pleased to carry out this vital duty, teaching, testing. There was significant gravity to the work with which he had been charged, to identify and prepare Starfleet's next finest. And yet he did look forward to working to his own full capacity aboard a starship. Rather than searching and reaching for padds full of stupidity that skittered on auditoria floors.

_Vulcans cannot be aggravated._

It was a trifle, an occasion when he could easily bring to bear his control and sense of objectivity, and yet, he _was_ aggravated at an inanimate object, and while he could actually bend the truth as he spoke it to others, there seemed little reason to try to lie to himself.

There was a loud swish, and a door in need of repair opened at the top of the auditorium, an elegantly simple nudge to his darkening mood. He heard soft footsteps, one pair of boots on the stairs, in all likelihood a human female weighing approximately 54.4 kilograms including whatever clothing and items she was carrying.

Such as coffee.

At 374 grams, including a potential 14 grams of sugar as evidenced by the strong sweetness mingled with the bitter tang in the air, all mitigated and yet intensified by a waft of cream. The cream changed everything. Spock catalogued this thought as odd and somehow, perhaps, inappropriate, though he was not sure why. The way that Cadet Uhura took her coffee was distinct, and apparently familiar. He noted its disarming pleasantness as his fingers brushed against the padd on the floor.

It was when he stood to face her that he became unsettled. He rose and assembled his clothing, and his mind engaged on several levels. He calculated the amount of sugar it would take to saturate the liquid and form a heavy, brownish sludge in the bottom of her mug. On yet another level, he was shocked by an unbidden image of the cadet dragging a finger through it, sugar sticking under her polished nail. On the surface, he managed to say good morning, and yet he awkwardly mistimed his communication while she had her eyes closed. He thought perhaps she was listening to music and did not hear him. He felt relief that the moment had almost gone.

And then he heard her answer, and his mind stilled.

With her long eyelashes still resting on her cheeks, she spoke in kind, "_ha'tha ti'lu._" He had never heard a word of Vulcan spoken as such a soft exhalation. He was motionless, and yet he leaned into the sound.

*


	33. State of Grace

_A/N: I want you to know about the slowness of this work. I have a book due in RL that is taking up a great deal of my creative energy and time. But I love this story and think about it often, and probably will only be able to update it once a week. Just want you to know what to expect on the updating. If you will hang in with me, I have lots more planned. p.s. FF will not let me format this as I usually do. Crud.  
_

_

* * *

_

**33. State of Grace**

......

That a form so filled with tension could work so well as a meditation focus seemed at first ironic, and yet it became more logical the more it was revealed. It achieved the smallest possible surface area for a given volume. That the shape sought this, and succeeded and found it and rested in it for however short a span of seconds was as exquisite as a Vulcan might admit.

And it was proven to work. So Spock imagined bubbles.

They coalesced around individual thoughts, and he looked at each thought, considered it, then stripped it of judgment. He aimed for blankness and breath, though on some level he continued to ponder and, he had to admit admire, the bubble form itself. An embodiment of a complex mathematical formula based on logic and striving for efficiency. A state of grace. It had been proven hundreds of years in the past that a spherical bubble formed of water and a surfactant had consistent zero mean curvature.

These facts clung to his consciousness, and he was comfortable with them and gave them up as one might a warm blanket. They were the last thoughts to go. _Two merged soap bubbles provide the optimally efficient enclosure of two given volumes of air._ And then Uhura, whose countenance came into his internal view and did not jar him, did not, this time, seem out of place and somehow embarrassing. This vague awkwardness was not something he could articulate in conscious life.

He did not remember what passed in and out of his mind as he meditated.

When he was through, he noticed the rain pattered against the windowpanes once more, and in the dove gray of morning he had a relaxed and satisfied moment, marked by the sounds and shufflings and aromas of the building waking up around him.

* * *

_Thanks and fact credit to Wikipedia, as so often is the case with this story. .org/wiki/Soap_bubble.  
_


	34. Equations for a Falling Body

_A/N: I want you to know about the slowness of this work. I have a book due in RL that is taking up a great deal of my creative energy and time. But I love this story and think about it often, and probably will only be able to update it once a week or so. Just want you to know what to expect on the updating. If you will hang in with me, I have lots more planned. p.s. FF will not let me format this as I usually do. Crud.  
_

_

* * *

_

**34. Equations for a Falling Body**

Nyota's roommate spoke in a soft, lilting voice, to the image of her toddler cousin. A little green face filled the screen, standing too close, sniffing, taking shuddering breaths. Gaila was holding two powder puffs and telling her why everything falls.

_This puff is Orion, and this puff is the moon._

Nyota lay on her bed and tried to imagine floating instead, not being drawn down. A reverie mixed and swirled with Gaila's little lesson until Nyota was carried on her thoughts as though bouncing on the waves of a choppy ocean. A desperate and endless rising and falling. She drifted, listening, feeling a miserable and thrilling want.

Spock's body intruded on every minute of her life, present on some level, giving new meaning to everything she studied. Equations. Languages. She could describe the way he walked in a dozen of them, each capturing a different nuance, something true. The shyness, the impossible mixture of halting yet fluid motion, the grace, the power. Each language in turn created a fresh longing.

It was awful and brilliant and so wrong and so right. She groaned and turned over on her bed, her hapless raft.

_Every planetary body draws things closer._

Gaila spoke about attraction. About undeniable forces and curvatures and spacetime. And Nyota was freshly stunned by a memory of his hips, the way they moved as he entered the classroom. The brief thought of them moving against her own body was like a spike of sunlight so sudden and brilliant she shied away. Mentally, she reeled off phrases in Vulcan, Andorian, Romulan. Phrases to calm herself, center herself, and yet describe how he glided through space, a composure and languidness of motion so deeply, painfully sexy.

How those hips would look if he bent to kneel.

Oh God. Spock kneeling.

Nyota imagined him sitting back on his boot heels, the dark boots pressed against his ass. She would circle him slowly, viewing his body, savoring the way his waistband would dip down in back, the way the dark gray fabric of his uniform would stretch tight across his thighs.

Gaila brought the powder puffs together. She spoke sweetly and enunciated for the child.

_See? Gravity doesn't pull down. It pulls together._

.....


	35. Fluid Dynamics

_A/N: I continue to appreciate every one of you who wait for these updates. And I really appreciate your kind words. I have a lot planned to happen in the coming weeks for these two, and so many million more moments of the kind of quiet intensity I feel is inherent in these characters. I will post every possible time I can write something I think is worthy. Thank you for reading and reviewing._

* * *

**35. Fluid Dynamics**

As Nyota ran the oval track, hovering above the gym floor, she shook out thoughts of physics. An upcoming test. There were so many, marking the end of the semester, words and numbers crammed into her head until it physically hurt. It was 05:15. She repeated the numbers like an internal chant. 05. 15. She ran to lose her critical self. And picked up speed.

She concentrated on the beat of her feet, ninety-two times per minute. She felt the pulsing of her blood and the rising and falling of all the energy in the building, the thrumming machines that kept it warm and clean, the soft whirring machinery that kept the track aloft, lit with a crystal blue and white light, the water running through systems unseen. As she let her conscious mind go, she felt the water most clearly. She started to enter the floating realm of pure movement, the physical joy of gliding as if on hoverskis. No. As if she were a sleek water animal. And then, even then more, as if she were the water itself. She thought again about fluid dynamics. About her physics quiz. Nebulae. Interstellar space. She flowed, following the brachiating thought streams.

It wasn't possible for him to be more beautiful.

The wetness sought only one place. And finally she allowed herself to think only of Spock. This time, his voice, the voice so hot and strong and sweet she could drink it, could almost physically feel it melting in her throat, or was it the imagined sensation of his tongue in her mouth that she really felt, the warmth and softness of what could be? She ran hard, half-heartedly pushing herself to work him off, to push away the rising and building of desire, and yet she ran hard to conjure him, too. To pretend, for this flowing moment, that it was his body that made her pant and sweat. So wrong. So gorgeous.

When she slowed and stopped, she glowed from the mixture of arousal and release. The track lowered. She stepped off, across the room, into the hall.

And there he was. Through a window, in an adjacent room, dark and lovely and gut-wrenchingly him. He was a shock in this unexpected place. She felt sudden guilt and fascination and desire, felt them all the more powerfully as the truth of the man layered on the immediacy of her dreaming. He moved with elegant ease, his bare feet shushing on a soft floor mat. So very early, she knew at once that he meant to be seen by no one. She almost felt deceitful, wrong for looking.

And yet, she had never seen his arms before. And the solid fact of them filled her eyes and added new texture and detail to every future fantasy.

Spock didn't see her, simply fixed his eyes on the wall ahead of him, then took up a fighting stance, and when he did he transformed into certain, terrifying intensity. In a second, without hesitation and full of grace. She watched his body move, his clothing, dark and loose against his pale skin. For how long? A minute? A thousand minutes.

When he finally dropped his concentration, she thought his shoulders rose with a bit of anxiousness, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes softened and took up something like defense. Then in a split second of decisive movement, he was finished. He was through with the room and moving toward the door to leave, and Nyota could not hide.

Crap. She always chose to run outside, but somehow she'd been unable to face the wetness. She'd come here to be dry.


	36. Corrections

**36. Corrections**

* * *

His bare feet shushed against the mat, a wisp of sound, no more than 11 decibels in volume.

The first time he had come to practice in this gym, on this mat, Spock had felt a stab of familiarity and recognized the auditory similarity to feet moving in sand. He had become accustomed to sensing the hot morning sun and the feel of his bare toes sifting through the surface dust of Vulcan. Had incorporated these sensations into his meditative workout. He described semi-circles in the imagined surface, felt the warm granules cleanse and soften his soles. He descended into the sleepiness, and yet precision and alertness, of ritual movement.

This morning, images came to mind, his father showing him the forms of _suss mahn_, making the fluid shapes with his own, much larger, body. Spock recalled Sarek's shadow, covering a large volume of ground in the slanted, early light. A vivid moment rose out of memory, his father touching him to correct the positioning of his forearm. It was a single brush of hand out of weeks and months of training. And through that brief connection, he felt his father blocking emotions of worry and pride. Feelings Spock sensed as though they were behind a thick door, or, more so, as though they emanated from a subterranean room, down a winding corridor in a dampened cave.

Perhaps six decibels. No more.

He had not thought of emotion as having auditory volume, and he catalogued this moment of insight as one more change wrought by living among Humans. As he slowly turned his core and positioned his arms, he recognized fluidity of thought and relation among like, and yet unlike, subjects.

The part of his mind that considered this pairing of sound and feeling struggled to take precedence, but was overcome by the advance of guilt and pain, of anger also, at the thought of his father's large presence, the presence of a man who had once been his concerned and loving guide.

Spock was suddenly through. His gaze rose to the blank gym wall, and abruptly he turned and reached the door.

A woman was there, dark and sweating. Her skin glistened, and her long eyelashes were damp, and in a spare moment under the glare of interior light, Spock did not recognize her. But one twentieth of a second later he did, and then in a similarly brief flash envisioned himself touching her forearm, guiding her in the first form. He imagined giving the softest nudge of correction, four decibels, no more. Imagined her tipping her head back toward his chest, her movements balletic and strong.

He shook his head in sharp dismissal of his own inappropriate thoughts and moved past her.


End file.
